


The Past A Mirror, Tilted Slightly Askew

by ambyr



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Gen, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:35:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: Trapped in a hostile Daevabad, Zaynab reflects on her childhood and considers her future.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 44
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Past A Mirror, Tilted Slightly Askew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sixthlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/gifts).



> Written before _Empire of Gold_ was released. Consider it AU.

“I don’t understand why we have to do this.” Aqisa addressed her question to the ceiling. She lay on a cot in the back room of a narrow shack in the shafit district, her hair stretched out behind her. Zaynab knelt beside her, working henna paste into each long, night-black lock.

“Because,” Zaynab said, as her fingers kept moving, massaging the thick paste more deeply into Aqisa’s roots, “we don’t have magic. So we do this the old way. The slow way. The way that you should be grateful I learned in my youth.”

Zaynab couldn’t see Aqisa rolling her eyes—a cloth covered the other woman’s face, protecting it from the dye—but she could feel it in the way her scalp moved. “I know _that_. I mean, why do we need to change our appearance at all? Can’t we just throw on a chador and a veil? Isn’t that what you ladylike types do when you’re out in the world?”

“And when they ask us at the docks to lift it?” Zaynab said. “To prove we are not the fugitives _that we are_?”

“I thought the Daevas were all about womanly modesty,” Aqisa objected. “I thought our tribe’s degenerate ways were just one of the many reasons they felt they should be ruling the city.”

“They are,” Zaynab said. “And I am sure Manizheh will be very apologetic about how our faces were exposed to her guards, right before she executes us. Perhaps she’ll let us put our veils back on first.”

Aqisa sighed. “You’re right. I just hate this.”

“I can tell,” Zaynab said, her voice dry. “You squirm worse than my brother.”

Aqisa’s scalp shifted again as her eyebrows raised. “You dyed your _brother’s_ hair?”

“Not his hair,” Zaynab corrected. “But when we were children, he was a very good model for my cosmetics practice.”

“Ali, in _facepaint_?” Aqisa sounded both scandalized and delighted. “Oh, his expression if I teased him about that.”

Zaynab _had_ teased him about it. Ali’s blush barely showed on his dark skin, but knowing it was there was always satisfaction enough for her. And teasing him, treating those memories as a harmless bit of fun—it had let her pretend their childhood had been in some way normal, not a mess of simmering tensions. 

Now, thinking back, it was impossible not to dwell on the darker currents. Maybe if she had paid a little more attention, had grown up a little faster—maybe then her family would not be divided: her mother in Ta Ntry, her older brother hostage, her younger brother vanished, herself trapped in a city where she _should_ be living a life of comfort. 

“I hope you have an opportunity to see it,” Zaynab said shortly. “I hope we both do.” Her fingers moved to the next lock, twisting, tugging. Aqisa, catching the shift in mood, made no complaint.

* * *

“Stay still,” Zaynab warned.

“Yes, ukhti,” Ali said obediently, his lips barely moving. His eyelids didn’t even flutter as she brought her gilt-powdered brush over them, making them gleam and helping bring out the faintest glint of Ayaanle gold that flecked his steel-gray Geziri eyes. She pondered the result, then set the brush aside and reached for her pot of kohl. Boys, Zaynab had heard the harem servants gossiping, had _unfairly_ lush and beautiful eyelashes. She hadn’t made a wide range of direct observations herself, but Ali’s were certainly long enough. Just a bit of kohl to thicken them, to provide a flash of contrast between eyes and eyelids every time he blinked, and the effect would be perfect.

“Are you done yet?”

Zaynab sighed, but she supposed even the most pliable of brothers couldn’t be expected to be perfectly patient when he was only four. “Almost, akhi.” She made a final swipe with the kohl brush. “There.”

He blinked rapidly but resisted the temptation—and she knew it was there, because she saw him raise, clench, and lower his hands—to rub his eyes.

“It feels funny,” Ali complained.

“That’s because you’re not used to it,” Zaynab said loftily, secure in the greater experience of her six full years of age. “ _I_ don’t notice it at all.”

“If you say so.” Ali’s hands fluttered up again before he caught himself and sat on them firmly. “Can I see?”

“Of course.” She tugged the silver basin of water she’d been using to dampen her brushes closer, and Ali leaned over, peering into it.

“Oh,” he said, blinking again. “I look like you.”

“That’s the point, akhi.” She had stolen—well, borrowed, she intended to put them _back_ —the cosmetics chest because she wanted to prove that _she_ could do the ceremonial make-up her maids put on her before every feast and festival just as well as they could, that she was old enough to be trusted with her own toilette. It wasn’t that she minded being pampered. It was just that the servants had such a _traditional_ idea of how to adorn her, all paint and no magic, and she had ideas for improvement, ideas she might be able to sneak in gradually if only she was permitted to do the work herself.

“I was hoping it would change me,” he said, finally giving in and swiping at one eye with his balled fist.

“Change you? Change you how?”

Ali spoke more to his hand than to her, examining the sparkling powder that streaked his knuckles. “Make me look more like father.”

Zaynab sat back on her heels. It had never occurred to her that anyone would want to look more like their father when they could instead resemble their regal, glamorous mother. There were ways, she knew, to use paint and powder to shift how shadows appeared to fall on his face, to soften his cheekbones and square up his chin. “I could try,” she started, but even she could hear the lack of confidence in her voice.

Ali shook his head. “No, it’s okay.” He swiped at his other eye, then dipped both hands in the water bowl, letting the glitter swirl to the surface. “It was stupid to think I could cheat.” He set his jaw—as well as a four-year-old still pudgy with baby fat could do such a thing. “I just need to learn to act more like father.”

“And why would you want to do such a thing?” Hatset asked, her tone deceptively mild.

Zaynab spun around, knocking the cosmetics chest over and sending pots and vials spilling across the floor. Ali jerked his hands out of the bowl. A wave of water followed them, reaching improbably high to splash his face. The water settled back in the bowl quickly, but not quickly enough to keep Hatset’s jaw from clenching.

“Am-ma,” Zaynab stammered, hastily trying to pull together an explanation.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Hatset said, her eyes never wavering from Ali’s dripping face. “Alu, child, what is it you think you need to learn?”

“How to be strong and brave and fight,” Ali said. The running kohl left trails down his cheeks, but he didn’t seem to notice, too caught up in his conviction in his own words. “How not to cry and not to be selfish and how to put my city and my family and my brother first.”

Hatset’s lips compressed. “And do you think those things are all that matters?”

Ali looked confused. “That’s what will make father proud of me. He says so.”

“Five years,” Hatset said to nothing in particular, to the roof of the pavilion and the fountain in the courtyard and the walls beyond it. “I have been given five years, and it will not be enough.” Her gaze sharpened again, and her voice as well. “Very well, Ali. If that is what you think matters, if you wish the path that will leave you in your brother’s shadow, go and learn it. You will not find it here. Shoo.” She flipped a hand toward the pavilion’s entrance, and Ali, wide-eyed, scurried away. Hatset turned to Zaynab. “For you, on the other hand, I have been given until the time you wed and set aside this family’s allegiances for new ones, and from you I expect better.”

“He asked—“ Zaynab started to lie glibly, secure in the knowledge that Ali was already in disfavor for the day and that, even if he were questioned, he would never turn in his beloved older sister.

“I do not refer to the cosmetics,” Hatset said, and gave the basin a significant glance.

“But that wasn’t me!” Zaynab said, genuinely indignant. “That must have been Ali.”

Hatset opened her mouth, then closed it. Her gaze followed the path her departing son had taken, and for a single moment the regal expression she always maintained wavered. She looked sad. No, she looked _terrified_. Zaynab squirmed, shaken. Then Hatset’s expression smoothed again. “I do not want to hear your lies, daughter. Not about the water, and not about the cosmetics.”

“Yes, Amma,” Zaynab said, but what she thought was, _But I wasn’t lying_.

* * *

A touch of Aqisa's hand on Zaynab's wrist said, "Now." They slipped from the shadow of one building to the next and were safely hidden, their black chadors blending with the night, before the next Daeva patrol tromped by. Zaynab studied the next block, trying to make out one impossible-to-distinguish shafit shack from the next, and left the job of counting heartbeats to time the patrols to Aqisa.

Another touch. They moved again. When the next patrol passed, Zaynab used the light of their torches to confirm that the blacker space behind one building was in fact what she sought. At least you could also count on the Daeva to be wreathed in flame.

 _If they have their way,_ you'll _be wreathed in flame._ Zaynab pushed the thought aside and tugged Aqisa closer to the grate.

Aqisa tried to shift it and winced at the sound. "We'll have to wait for isha," she whispered, voice so low that even with her lips pressed to Zaynab's ear Zaynab could scarcely hear her through the fabric of her veil.

Zaynab squeezed her hand in acknowledgement. Another patrol passed, and another, as they crouched in the muck. Then, finally, the call to night prayer sounded, and under its echoing cries Aqisa shoved the stone grate aside. By the time the muezzin were done, they were both inside the abandoned sewer, the grate securely back in place.

There was more muck at the bottom of the tunnel, and they had to move slowly to prevent splashing. If they could have conjured flame, they would have had an easier time seeing where they were going. If they could conjure flame, Zaynab would know exactly what the muck consisted of. She decided, on the whole, that just this once she was happier without magic.

There was no grate at the other end, only the tangled roots of an old olive tree. After the sewer tunnel, even the starlight seemed bright, never mind the street lamps burning a few dozen feet away. They were out of the shafit district, now, in the Tukharistani quarter, where the street was not lined with trash and the patrols infrequent and polite. Zaynab let out the tiniest sigh of relief.

"How did you even know that was _there_?" Aqisa asked as she patted the folds of her chador, checking her weapons. She was still whispering; Zaynab was not certain they would ever get past the habit of whispering.

"My brother told me years ago. Muntadhir. He used it for assignations. He didn't tell me it was _filthy_ ," she added.

Aqisa snorted softly. "I'm glad I didn't ask you before. I'm not sure I would have been willing to trust my life to Muntadhir's boasting."

"He is my brother," Zaynab said, perhaps more sharply than justified. It was hard not to speak sharply about Muntadhir these days, hard not to flinch whenever she thought of him in Manizeh's hands. There had been no pronouncement from the palace about his fate; she assumed he was alive only because she was confident Manizheh would have made any execution a public one. She forced her voice to remain low. "And I confirmed it later with Ali. He was very enthusiastic about it. Apparently the shafit used to use them to dispose of their trash, because they couldn't just burn it with a snap of their fingers."

"That does sound like something Ali would be enthusiastic about," Aqisa agreed quietly. "Also, like something all of us will need soon, if we don't fix things." She mimed snapping her fingers; no flame resulted.

"We will fix things," Zaynab said flatly. Ahead of her, she could see, towering over the walls that divided the Tukharistani quarter from the Daeva quarter, the Palace: her former home, Muntadhir's probable prison. "But we cannot fix anything until we leave this city."

Aqisa nodded, tested drawing and resheathing one final knife too fast for Zaynab to catch where it was stowed on her person, and straightened, ready to follow.

* * *

Zaynab knew Muntadhir wanted something from the moment the servant arrived bearing the first tray, but she saw no reason to let that spoil her pleasure in either his company or the feast he brought. She cooed over each dish in turn, from tiny steamed buns filled with sticky-sweet pumpkin to towering spirals of crispy fried noodles, watching Muntadhir's frustration gradually peak. Every time he seemed about to interrupt her inanities, she distracted him with a question, her wide eyes emphasizing her desperate need to know what the Malaccan ambassador's wife was wearing or why the price of cinnamon had grown _so_ high.

"I don't know!" he finally snapped, throwing his hands in the air. "Ask Ali, if you care so much. I'm sure he can bury you in figures."

"I will write him a letter," she assured him. "Sadly, it is rare for him to visit the palace. I am fortunate to have _one_ brother who values his teenaged sister's company so highly that he will take time out of his busy, busy day for nothing but shared pleasantries." She wiped the last of the pomegranate seed juice from her lips with a delicate flick of a napkin and reached backward to hand the discarded cloth to a servant without ever breaking eye contact with Muntadhir.

He shifted uncomfortably. 

"Yes?" Zaynab asked, encouraging.

"I did have a _small_ favor to ask," he admitted.

She clasped her hand to her heart. "I am shocked and despondent."

"And pleasantly satiated," he said drily, gesturing at the empty dishes.

"As though that could make up for being so harshly treated by my own dear family," she scoffed. But she also gestured the servants away. Once they had filed out of the pavilion, she leaned forward, chin on her hand. "Well?"

"I'm told you have a Tukharistani servant named Aynur."

She narrowed her eyes. "I have many servants. It's rare for you to take an interest in them. If that interest is amorous, I must—"

"No, no." Muntadhir waved his hands. "I'm told _she_ has a friend named Patime, and that friend is a servant to the lady Ilham."

"It's possible," Zaynab agreed. "What of it?"

Muntadhir gave her a little glare, but she waited for him to spell it out. "I would like to pass a message to Ilham."

"And? Surely you can simply send it to her family's home."

"A _discreet_ message."

"So there _is_ amorous interest," Zaynab said with some delight. It was only her own servants' morals that she felt some obligation to defend. The rest of the city could take its chances with her brother.

"I would not say such a thing," Muntadhir said, gazing upward with apparent interest in the pavilion's painted ceiling. "Not to my maiden sister."

Zaynab rolled her eyes. "If she really is a lady, I don't know why you're being all smoke and embers about it. Father will be over the moon to see you showing interest in someone who isn't a dancing girl."

"No, he wouldn't."

Zaynab blinked. "He wants you wed, Muntadhir. The sooner the better."

Muntadhir winced visibly at that. "Yes. He does. Safely wed, to a nice Geziri girl. Not to a Tukharistani woman to produce another generation of royal mixed-bloods."

Zaynab's face went very still, and there was no longer laughter hiding beneath her words. "And just what is wrong with mixed-bloods, _akhi_?"

He had the grace to look guilty, at least, but he spoke bluntly. "You know what's wrong, Zaynab. You deal with the prejudice every day. And if you think Father would let me marry outside the tribe for anyone less than some imaginary long-lost daughter of the Nahids, you're mistaken. He hoped marrying your mother would strengthen connections between the tribes. It's only brought more scheming."

" _I'm_ not the one who came to this meeting with a secret plan," Zaynab said.

Muntadhir sighed, acknowledging the hit. "Yes, well, very true. Well? Will you help me, ukhti?"

"I ought to throw you out for insulting me," she told him.

"'Ought to,'" he noted. "Not 'will.'"

"The abuse I take in the name of family unity. Tell me this, akhi, if your message does meet with a kind reception, how exactly are you planning on moving beyond passing notes?"

"There's an abandoned sewer tunnel that goes under the wall and comes up just outside her family compound. Ali mentioned it a meeting last week, when he went on a tear campaigning for some sanitation improvements for the shafit. After that . . . if the lady is willing, I fancy I'm fit enough to scale a _small_ wall."

"If." Zaynab shook her head. "Well? Let's see this message that's supposed to inspire such ardor."

Muntadhir cleared his throat. Zaynab stared at him. "I was hoping you might be willing to write it for me." She kept staring. "Your handwriting is very fine," he added blithely.

"You don't trust a scribe to do it justice," she translated. "You really _are_ head over heels for this woman. At least this week. It is possible, Muntadhir, for a man to learn to write his own letters."

"But why should I," he argued with a smile, "when I have such a charming sister to write them for me?"

"I hear," Zaynab said to the air over his left ear, "that the Tukharistani have developed a new form of silk recently. One that flickers red and orange and blue like a living flame, but never burns. I think a bolt would make for a lovely gown for me, don't you?"

Muntadhir looked pained. "We don't all have Ayaanle grandfathers throwing fortunes at us."

"Yes, well, what a shame we can't all be mixed-bloods. On second thought, perhaps two bolts would be better."

Muntadhir flung his hands and gaze upward. "I'm being robbed by my own sister. Very well, a bolt of silk."

"What a fortunate girl I am to have such a generous brother," Zaynab purred. "Well? Did you bring me paper and ink? What is this famous message to say?"

* * *

The water of the lake had been smooth Zaynab’s entire life, held glass-like by the marid’s curse. Only boats disturbed it. Even in storms, when fountains and canals roiled with concentric circles, the lake had remained still, swallowing each fallen droplet without a ripple. Now, though, the curse was gone, and the wind that blew them out from Daevabad frothed white-tipped wavelets across the lake’s surface. Even with the distraction of the Tukharistani caravan crowded aboard the ferry, their colorful silks rippling as they jostled each other and darted nervous glances back at the city they could not quite believe they had been permitted to leave, it was impossible not to stare at the lake, watching it for any sign that the curse had returned.

“We made it,” Aqisa said.

“We’ve left the city,” Zaynab corrected. “I wouldn’t rush to take off your veil just yet.”

Aqisa flipped her hand dismissively. “Manizheh doesn’t have enough men to patrol the far bank of the lake, and you know it.” Despite her words, though, she left the veil in place, and cast only one longing glance to the traveling trunk that held the weapons she was desperate to rearm herself with. “I thought we were done for when that guard pulled you aside.”

Zaynab shrugged. “If being mistaken for Ayaanle is good for anything, it’s that greed makes people thoughtless. He saw my skin and thought only of the bribes I might pay.”

“The bribes you did pay,” Aqisa corrected.

“Those jewels were paste,” Zaynab scoffed. “Anyone without the discernment to reject them as an insult has no business guarding as much as a privy.”

“A toast to his lack of discernment,” Aqisa said. “Though wasn’t it risky, offering false payment?”

“It would have been riskier offering him royal jewels he might have recognized,” Zaynab said drily.

Aqisa conceded the point with a flick of her wrist. “And we’ll need the jewels to pay our way.”

“I’ve paid the caravan already,” Zaynab said airily, as though by sheer force of will she could keep the other woman from questioning her. It had worked, more or less, for their weeks hiding in the city. Aqisa had trusted her greater knowledge of Daevabad. It was, she was afraid, less likely to work now. “They’ll take us as far as the banks of the Indus.”

“The Indus? I thought we’d be buying horses and turning west as soon as we were out of the mountains. Or did you mean to take a ship down the river and then sail to Ta Ntry from the Agnivanshi coast? You Ayaanle do love water.”

Zaynab took a deep breath. “We’re not going to Ta Ntry. We’re going to Malacca.”

Aqisa abandoned caution, yanking down her veil and pulling Zaynab closer so she could hiss at her in a furious whisper. The cosmetics Zaynab had so carefully applied that morning, Zaynab noted distantly, had already smeared, but this seemed like the wrong moment to point that out. At least Aqisa's hair was still a fiery Sahrayn red-black. “I have not stayed with you all this time to help you abandon your people. Your mother has wealth, power. She has the resources to find your brother, to take back the city for him. We are not fleeing.”

“No,” Zaynab agreed. “We are not fleeing. We are going to Malacca, where, you might recall, I have a wedding to attend.”

“A _wedding_?” Aqisa stared at her, incredulous. “I thought the one silver lining of this disaster was that your father could no longer marry you off to the richest old lecher he could find.”

“My father,” Zaynab said, “has nothing to do with this.” She tried to tug Aqisa’s veil back into place, but the other woman jerked away. Zaynab held up a hand for peace. “You are correct. My mother is wealthy and connected, and she is Ali’s best hope. If he can be found, she will find him. But she does not care if Manizheh breaks every bone in Muntadhir’s body and throws his corpse from the city wall.”

“Muntadhir—,” Aqisa started, carefully.

“—is _my brother_. I am tired of plans that treat my brothers as disposable.”

Aqisa crossed her arms over her chest. “And you think the sultan of Malacca will treat them as any less disposable?”

“I think the sultan of Malacca wants very much to be married to the sister of the ruler of Daevabad,” Zaynab said. “I think he has ‘wealth, power.’ And I think it is time I started building my own base of power. My mother will search for Ali whether we join her or not. If she finds him— _when_ she finds him—I will be ready to help, on my own terms. Does that satisfy you? Can we stop proclaiming our plans where any Daeva spy amongst the caravan might overhear?”

Aqisa assessed her, her hawk-like gaze unwavering, but Zaynab knew better than to flinch in the face of a predator. She’d grown up with her father, after all. “It satisfies me for the moment. But, sister, do you really intend to let—“

Zaynab gave the faintest mock shudder. “Let’s get to Malacca,” she suggested, “and then we’ll see what I intend.”

Aqisa snorted, but her lips turned up in a narrow smile and she did not object when Zaynab reached again to tug her veil back over her face. Face covered, she turned toward the passengers, no doubt eyeing the crowd for anyone who looked over-interested in their conversation. 

Zaynab left her to it, returning her attention to the water. The wind had died down, and the lake was back to its usual glass-like texture. She could see nothing below its surface, only her own veiled reflection. And yet somewhere, somewhere—

The water in front her writhed, and she jerked back, breaking her connection with whatever she had touched in her depths. It had been cold. Alien. And, somehow, familiar.

That night, camped with the caravan in the foothills of the mountains, she dreamed of water: not the mirrored surface of the lake, but a river, sluggishly flowing and rich with silt, a river that drew her with it slowly, past fields and huts and into a city so caked in mud and filth she barely recognized it as one. There were no brass walls here, no gleaming colored lanterns. Only humans packed upon humans, and once, in a flash glimpsed through a crowd, a single pair of gold-flecked steel gray eyes.

She woke to find her mouth full of silty water, and spat it out. _Be safe, little brother_ , she thought, and, glancing back across the lake to the city no longer hidden behind a veil of illusion, _Stay strong, older brother. I_ will _find a way to make our home ours again._


End file.
